"He offered a price that I could not resist, Smith. Try to forgive me, if you can. I know that I have done a dastardly thing, but--perhaps a day may come in your own life when you will understand. He descended with me to a cellar under the empty house, in which some one was locked. Had I arrested Fu-Manchu this poor captive must have died there of starvation; for no one would ever have suspected that the place had an occupant...." The door of the sitting-room was thrown open, and, wearing my great-coat over the bizarre costume in which I had found her, with her bare ankles and little red slippers peeping grotesquely from below, and her wonderful cloud of hair rippling over the turned-up collar, Kâramaneh came out! Her great dark eyes were raised to Nayland Smith's with such an appeal in them--an appeal for _me_--that emotion took me by the throat and had me speechless. I could not look at either of them; I turned aside and stared into the lighted sitting-room. How long I stood so God knows, and I never shall; but suddenly I found my hand seized in a vice-like grip, I looked around ... and Smith, holding my fingers fast in that iron grasp, had his left arm about Kâramaneh's shoulders, and his gray eyes were strangely soft, whilst hers were hidden behind her upraised hands. "Good old Petrie!" said Smith hoarsely. "Wake up, man; we have to get her to a hotel before they all close, remember. _I_ understand, old man. That day came in my life long years ago!" CHAPTER XXXIV GRAYWATER PARK "This is a singular situation in which we find ourselves," I said, "and one that I'm bound to admit I don't appreciate." Nayland Smith stretched his long legs, and lay back in his chair. "The sudden illness of Sir Lionel is certainly very disturbing," he replied, "and had there been any possibility of returning to London to-night, I should certainly have availed myself of it, Petrie. I share your misgivings. We are intruders at a time like this." He stared at me keenly, blowing a wreath of smoke from his lips, and then directing his attention to the cone of ash which crowned his cigar. I glanced, and not for the first time, toward the quaint old doorway which gave access to a certain corridor. Then-- "Apart from the feeling that we intrude," I continued slowly, "there is a certain sense of unrest." "Yes," snapped Smith, sitting suddenly upright--"yes! You experience this? Good! You are happily sensitive to this type of impression, Petrie, and therefore quite as useful to me as a cat is useful to a physical investigator." He laughed in his quick, breezy fashion. "You will appreciate my meaning," he added; "therefore I offer no excuse for the analogy. Of course, the circumstances, as we know them, may be responsible for this consciousness of unrest. We are neither of us likely to forget the attempt upon the life of Sir Lionel Barton two years ago or more. Our attitude toward sudden illness is scarcely that of impartial observers."